Navigation

The Ministry of Defence funded a secret study in 2002 to see if psychic powers could be useful for defence. This information was released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The MOD started by trying to recruit professional "psychics", but when these refused to participate they resorted to amateur volunteers. The research cost £18,000. Apparently 28% of these people did have some success but in general the experiment was adjudged a failure and it was abandoned.

A few days ago when I first read the newspaper reports revealing that Britainâ€™s Ministry of Defense (MoD) had researched psychic skills, I started scribbling down a table-thumping rant about how wrong-headed the research had been â€“ not because it had been done at all (which I otherwise applaud) but because of how poorly-conceived it had been, at least according to the newspapers. Before I published my rant far and wide, someone fortunately pointed me to the actual 168-page declassified report, where I could read a more detailed account of what the MoD had actually done. I discovered that the news stories were embarrassingly oversimplified and incomplete, and that the research was not as ill-advised as reporters had claimed. It was still flawed, which I discuss below â€“ but the whole affair amounts to the latest example of societyâ€™s self-perpetuating ignorance of the nature of â€œpsychic phenomenaâ€ in general and remote viewing in particular.